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The Patriots could very well be going from a prototypical left tackle who was 6-foot-8 with 35.5-inch arms (Nate Solder), to one that is 6-foot-3 with 33.5-inch arms (first-round pick Isaiah Wynn).
Just don’t expect offensive line coach Dante Scarnecchia to care very much about it.
“I think that (expletive) is way overrated. I really do,” Scarnecchia said Friday. “I’m not saying every tackle you have should have 20-inch arms. But what I’m saying is maybe there are some men among us (on the Patriots’ roster). The guys we have that we’re training at that position, all fall within those standards. Matt Light’s arms are 33 inches and he played 10 years in this league … Did you know that?
“We’d like to see them be as tall and as long as they can possibly be. But does he have the skill to play it? Does he have the length to play it? What’s long enough?”
(I called the thought that tackles had to be a certain size hogwash on draft night, so Scar wins on creativity points … he was in the Marine Corps reserves.)
Obviously, a lot of the talk centered on Wynn and what the Patriots will do along the offensive line with Solder in New York, and both Shaq Mason and Joe Thuney entering contract years. First and foremost, Scar likes his room, and that’s important.
“I’m just going to make this really clear right now: I really like the guys we have here right now. That’s the good news,” he said. “The bad news is we can’t work with some of them until training camp starts because we’ve got two guys with shoulders (Wynn, Trent Brown), we have a guy with a bad foot (Thuney) and on and on and on (Marcus Cannon also isn’t available until camp). But that’s the hand we’ve been dealt.
“When training camp comes around, they’re all going to be out there, and I’m really excited about working with these guys. I want to make that really clear to everybody. We’ve got the guys we’ve got and I’m happy with it. I don’t know what it’s going to look like, but I’m really happy with it because I like the way they work, I like the people, I think they’re going to do everything we ask them to do and that’s all I care about, and then we’ll see what we can do from there. We’ll find out.”
As for replacing Solder, Scarnecchia said it’s a big challenge because of the way Solder “played over the last half of the (2017) season.”
“He played really well, because he finally learned how to use hands the way we wanted him to use them,” Scarnecchia said. “He really got into a good comfort zone. There’s a lot of work that goes into that, on his part especially. So there he is (with the Giants). He’s been given this opportunity and (he’s) taken advantage of it for him and his family, so now the next thing is we have to replace him. We have guys we hope to be able to step in there and do what you have to do every year at this time — (you) lose some good players, and you have to replace them. And that’s what we’re faced with now.”
Basically, it the Patriots are going to put all their tackles — Wynn, Brown, LaAdrian Waddle and Matt Tobin on the left; Marcus Cannon, Andrew Jelks and Ulrick John on the right — on the field when they can, see what it looks like, and go from there.
Wynn and Brown seem to be leading the candidates to succeed Solder.
“We’re specifically going to give Isaiah a chance to play left tackle, we’ll give him a chance to play guard, and we’ll move Trent from the right side to the left side, and from the left side to the right side, and we’re going to see what it looks like,” Scarnecchia said. “That’s what training camp and preseason are for, so we’ll see what it all looks like.
“(Wynn was a) really good player in the best conference in America at his position. Smart, he’s tough as they come, played the whole year with a bad shoulder. He’s got great traits.”
The Patriots prefer to keep Cannon at right tackle. As for 6-foot-8 1/2, 380-pound Brown, whom the Patriots acquired from the 49ers in a trade, Scarnecchia said he’s never coached a larger player.
“We’ve had big guys like Trent in there before — well, maybe we’ve never had a guy that big … he’s pretty big — but when you see him play, you see a lot of things that we do and hopefully, that will manifest itself out. We’ll see,” Scarnecchia said

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